Queens Campus
ENG 2100: Literature and Culture
(12428)
MWF 12:20-1:15 p.m.
Dr. Joanne Neff
Origins
Who am I? How did I come here? Did I evolve from the
apes? This course will investigate various writings on the
issue of the ORIGINS of the universe, of the world, and of
humanity. We will study some creation narratives and a number
of other works that precede Charles Darwin. Then we will read
what Darwin has to say about evolution and about himself, as
well. We will also look at his contemporaries and their
reaction to
his radical ideas. Next, we turn to post-Darwin literature,
including the famous film about the Scopes Trial, Inherit the Wind.
Modern science has modified Darwin’s original ideas, and we will
examine some of these refinements and especially the direction in
which they lead. We will also look into the current
controversy about “Intelligent Design” and high school
curricula. We will examine literature that reflects Darwin’s
influence, the subsequent loss of faith, and the search for
individual origins. Possible additional texts include works
by Kipling, Stevenson, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, and Freud.
ENG 2100: Literature and Culture
(12424)
TR 3:05-4:30 p.m.
Prof. Michael O’Donnell
“Language and Culture”
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
-Shakespeare
What is in a name? Exactly what is the importance of a
thing’s name to the identity of that thing? Likewise, what is
the importance of a society’s language, of its overall names and
naming practices, to the collective identity of that society?
This course investigates the complex connections between Language
and Culture. Just how integral to a society’s culture is its
language? Can one understand a people’s culture without first
learning that people’s language? Can learning a
society’s language inform us of that society’s culture? What
is the role of reading and writing in a culture? How does
literacy affect one’s place in society? Where do multilingual
members of a society belong? Can names change? Can
language change? Can culture change? Are there links
between a changing language and an evolving culture? The main texts
for our investigation of Language and Culture will include
Shakespeare’s beloved comedy of eavesdropping and miscommunication,
Much Ado About Nothing; Friel’s drama Translations, about the
British translation of Irish town names, which investigates the
crisis of a culture whose language is under siege; Achebe’s novel
Things Fall Apart, which depicts the crisis of a language whose
corresponding culture is under attack; and Adichie’s Purple
Hibiscus, a contemporary tale of a fourteen-year old Nigerian
girl’s struggle to marry her family’s two disparate cultures and
languages into a new hybrid culture. We will supplement these
texts with a wide range of poetry and short stories from various
time periods and regions of the globe.
ENG 2200: Introduction to English Studies
(13904)
MWF 8:00-8:55 a.m.
Dr. Robert Forman
The course begins with some exercises on how to read a text, how to
achieve a “close reading,” and whether a text “means” or whether
the reader informs the text with meaning. It continues with
brief considerations of classical and contemporary critical
approaches to interpreting literature and a survey of modern
critical methods. An important final component is research
methods, specifically traditional and online tools for research and
writing on literature.
ENG 2200: Introduction to English Studies
(12643)
MWF 10:10-11:05 a.m.
Dr. William Mohr
“The only book worth reading once is the one worth reading twice,”
observed T.E. Lawrence in a letter to a friend. Literary
interpretation concerns itself with repeated readings, each ideally
absorbing new information about patterns of possible
interpretation. In this class we will explore how the
interpretation of a text is more than an isolated moment of
self-gratification, but a chance to understand how culture is in a
continual dialogue with literature in all of its possible
permutations. We will read plays, poems, and a variety of
prose narratives and essays, and consider how critics use these
materials as a means of producing theories about the development of
categories such as class, gender and race. This course will
also serve as an introduction to debates about concepts of period,
text, and authorship. Each student will write several short
papers, and one longer essay that will incorporate elements of a
research paper into the argument.
ENG 2200: Introduction to English Studies
(12427)
TR 10:45-12:10 p.m.
Dr. John Lowney
This course introduces the interpretive reading and writing
practices that constitute the English major. Through the
reading, interpretation, and criticism of selected prose, fiction,
poetry, drama, and literary nonfiction, it will foster an
understanding of the methodologies of literary and cultural
studies. While the course will introduce important
theoretical problems and terms, it will emphasize the practical
experience of writing within the English major, from the
composition of brief essays to the development of a final research
paper.
ENG 2300: Introduction to Literary
Criticism and Theory (12644)
TR 9:10-10:35 a.m.
Dr. Steven Mentz
This course aims to domesticate the often difficult texts and
arguments of modern literary theory. The word “theory”
derives from a Greek term describing persons sent to bring answers
back from the Oracle at Delphi, and in the last century theory has
acquired a Delphic air of mystery and impenetrability. We’ll
make this material accessible in two ways: first, we will trace a
history of literary terms and ideas we often use without thinking
about how they really function (author, text, poem, novel, comedy,
criticism, etc.), and second we will examine the practical value of
modern critical theory in relation to our own culture as well as
literary texts. We’ll use Everyday Theory, a new anthology of
theoretical writing, Jonathan Culler’s excellent Literary Theory: A
Very Short Introduction, and also Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice.
ENG 2300: Introduction to Literary
Criticism and Theory (12425)
TR 3:05-4:30 p.m.
Dr. Gregory Maertz
An introduction to theory and criticism on literature and art
through reading and discussion of twenty of the most important
writers, philosophers, and critics in the Western tradition,
including Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel
Johnson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats,
Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzche, George Eliot, Virginia
Woolf, Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor
Adorno, and Jacques Derrida.
ENG 3110: Chaucer (12929)
MWF 1:25-2:20 p.m.
Dr. Margaret Kim
In this course we will read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Troilus and
Criseyde, and his minor poems. Besides understanding the
literary genres and conventions of Chaucer and his contemporaries,
we will explore the poet’s interest in gender, class, and
history.
ENG 3140: Shakespeare: The Jacobean Plays
(11312)
TR 1:30-2:55 p.m.
Dr. Steven Mentz
Shakespeare and the Literature of Empire
This course reads plays from the second half of Shakespeare’s
career as reflecting two competing ideas of empire that circulated
in Jacobean England: a model of political stability drawn from
Virgil’s Aenid, and a model of cyclical change drawn from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. We’ll read excerpts from these two classical
epics as we contrast a series of plays that explore Virgilian
empire (Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Cymbeline) with a rival series that
investigate Ovidian change (Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, The
Winter’s Tale). The course then concludes with King Lear, a
play that combines these ways of thinking by exposing the emotional
costs of maintaining a kingdom and a family.
ENG 3200: Eighteenth-Century British
Literature ((13903)
TR 4:40-6:05 p.m.
Dr. Kathleen Lubey
Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Literary Culture
During the eighteenth century in Britain, poets were fascinated
both by the poetic traditions of antiquity and by the desire to
innovate, to write in modern ways about contemporary issues.
Not only did they write poetry, they wrote essays for one another
and for readers that deliberated about how poetry works, what makes
it beautiful, and why it mobilizes readers’ imaginations. As
they enthusiastically valued their classical forbears and located
many important traditions there, poets and philosophers also drew
upon new “scientific” and social discoveries about the mind to
fashion theories for how poetry ought to stimulate its
readers. In this course, we will trace the strategies writers
invented for achieving balance between old and new in literary
culture by surveying the major poets and philosophers of language
in the long eighteenth century, including Dryden, Behn, Rochester,
Pope, Swift, Montague, Finch, Thompson, Collins, Johnson, Addison,
Hume, and Burke. We’ll see that as they explore the reaches
of their readers’ imaginations, these thinkers comment upon the
most compelling cultural phenomena of the time, sexuality, gender,
urbanization, science, social status, the literary marketplace,
neoclassicism, and satire. Evaluation will be based on three
papers, a final, reading quizzes, attendance and participation.
ENG 3240: Romantic Literature (11862)
MWF 10:10-11:05 a.m.
Dr. Joanne Neff
No education in literature is complete without a course in the
Romantics. The most famous authors are the “big six” poets:
Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy, Shelley, and Keats, but
we will also study De Quincey on opium abuse, Burns on the ballad,
Dorothy Wordsworth on journaling, and Scott and Austen on
fiction. The Romantics elevate the male poet to a mythical
status while generally pushing women to the margins. Despite
their label, they rarely write about true love. The writers
live in the era of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror,
public hangings, frequent disease, and early death, and their
material is often Gothic. These authors argue and inspire,
theorize and imagine. Studying the Romantics brings to life
in their frequently outrageous glory.
ENG 3330: African-American Literature to
1900 (13909)
TR 9:10-10:35 a.m.
Dr. Granville GanterThis course will examine early U.S.
African-American literature, paying particular attention to the
international aspects of black writing, a discursive and
geographical domain currently known as “the Black Atlantic.”
Stretching from African epic to Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman stories,
we will think about the uses of folklore and myth, and the role
of literature’s contribution personal or national
consciousness (in both African, and U.S. contexts). For
example, does African epic help us understand the national or
racial consciousness that early African American artists had?
We will also consider the consequences of joint authorship, when a
text is an explicit collaboration between two or more people, or
when elements of a text have been borrowed or plagiarized from
other sources. What do we do with the evidence, argued
recently by Vincent Carretta, that the author of a famous
eighteenth-century slave narrative, Olaudah Equiano, may have
actually been born in South Carolina and “made up” his African
memories? Or Lydia Maria Child’s sentimental editing of Linda
Brent’s Narrative? In what way is the slave narrative, often
taken to be the ur-moment of African-American writing, engaged with
other anglo-literary traditions? How does gender shape early
African-American literature? And finally, in what way is a
folktale a “literary” text? Principal readings will include
the Mali national epic, The Sundiata, Olaudah Equiano, Phillis
Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent, and
Charles Chesnutt.
ENG 3440: Contemporary Poetry
(13907)
TR 1:30-2:55 p.m.
Dr. John Lowney
This course is an introduction to important movements, trends, and
issues in postmodern poetry. Through intensive study of
selected North American and Caribbean writers, we will examine the
diversity of poetic traditions that have emerged in the second half
of the twentieth century. Beginning with the “New American
Poetry” of the 1950s and 60s and concluding with more recent
cross-cultural writing, this course will emphasize the interaction
of postmodern poetry with developments in the visual arts, music,
and popular culture. Topics to be considered include the
relations of poetry to gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity,
politics and social protest, and history and autobiography.
ENG 3450: Modern Drama
(11311)
TR 3:05-4:30 p.m.
Dr. Angela Belli
This course will present a study of the major playwrights of the
modern era who revolutionized the stage for our time.
Dramatists of European and American identities who responded to the
challenge of a rapidly changing social milieu, beginning in the
late 19th Century and continuing into the 20th Century, created a
theater which opened to view the spectacle of an age in conflict
with itself, the age of a new generation that struggled for
identity. The goal of this course is to gain an understanding
and appreciation of such works.
ENG 3550: Short Fiction
((13908)
MWF 11:15-12:10 p.m.
Prof. Gabriel Brownstein
Some people will tell you that the short story is dead in the
United States. They’ll say that no one much reads short
stories anymore, and that no one much publishes them. This
class will argue that the opposite is true: that the U.S. short
story is alive and thriving and in a constant state of
reinvention. We’ll study some works by major writers of the
twentieth century, such as Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston, and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, and then we will read stories by living writers,
including Joan Silber, Edward P. Jones, and David Foster
Wallace. We’ll look at ways in which short fiction is always
being discovered and rediscovered and made new.
ENG 3570: Women and Literature
(13906)
TR 1:30-2:55 p.m.
Dr. Jennifer Travis
Women on the Brink
This class will examine how contemporary women writers imagine
personal and cultural thresholds, especially “border crossings”
from girlhood into womanhood. Writers include: Sandra
Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Toni Morrison, Helen Oyeyemi, and Nicole
Krauss.
Eng 3600: Classical Epic in Translation
(14573)
MWF 9:05-10:00 a.m.
Dr. Robert Forman
The course begins with a close reading of Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey. It then considers Vergil’s Aeneid, how it
resembles and more importantly departs from Homer’s accounts of the
Trojan War. Traditional criticism classifies the Aeneid as
wholly positive in its view of Rome and Augustus, logical since
Vergil received an imperial subvention; but this course will
examine how the poem’s diction allows multiple readings. The
course concludes with a reading of the Argonautica, by the
third-century B.C. Alexandrian Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes. Of
special interest for English majors are the parallels we will make
with English and American writers influenced by Greek and Roman
epic.
ENG 3720: Intro to Creative Writing
(14574)
W. 3:35-6:20 p.m.
Prof. Thomas Philipose
This introductory creative writing workshop will focus on your
writing and your thoughts (that means you will be writing a
lot). We will explore the creative aspects of fiction,
non-fiction, poetry, and playwriting. We will use texts from
various genres/media as guides for discovery of what your writing
voice/style can be. You will be expected to attend public
readings and performances (off campus and on your own time).
We will not rely on the thoughts/styles/critiques of others to help
us become careful readers and diligent writers. An
experimental and non-traditional approach will be encouraged to
help elicit fresh, unique work that reflects the individual writers
in our workshop. The majority of our classwork will entail
reading and discussing your writing.
ENG 3730: Poetry Workshop
(12932)
MWF 11:15-12:10 p.m.
Prof. Lee Ann Brown
In this workshop, we will study a wide variety of poetry and
poetics, and write and discuss our own poems. Poems in both
traditional and experimental poetic forms will be written, along
with critical papers on poetry and poetics. Other activities
we will pursue: in-class presentations and performances,
memorization of single poems; revision; visits by poets; attendance
of both on and off campus poetry readings. Attention will be
paid to how visual and time based arts inform poetic practice as
well. By the end of the semester, each student will be
required to submit a poetry manuscript that has undergone multiple
revisions, along with a statement of their own poetics. Class
participation is essential to this workshop course.
ENG 3740: Creative Writing: Fiction
(13910)
MWF 2:30-3:25 p.m.
Prof. Gabriel Brownstein
This is an introduction to fiction writing, focusing mainly on the
short story. Students will write regular exercises, playing
with notions like point of view, detail, character, conflict, and
dialogue; these exercises will lead to the writing of original
short stories. We’ll read some great writers as we work on
our own fiction—including Chekhov and Carver and Paley and
Kincaid—and we’ll try to figure out how to tell our own stories in
engaging and exciting ways.
ENG 4993: Seminar in Special Authors:
O’Neill, Miller and Simon (12933)
TR 10:45-12:10 p.m.
Dr. Angela Belli
The works of three major American playwrights will be studied as
markers of the American experience. The focus will be on
analyzing the ways in which three dramatists reflect and comment
upon the changing and diverse nature of our culture. Viewed
from the dual perspectives of tragedy and comedy, the plays will be
appraised for their artistic vision in creating a heightened
awareness of our national reality.
ENG 4994: Seminar in Themes/Genres
(13905)
MWF 1:25-2:20 p.m.
Prof. Lee Ann Brown
Southern Literature
This course will trace some of the history and tendencies of what
has come to be termed “Southern Literature.” This seminar is
not a historical survey course, but will range across multiple
periods and genres (poetry, fiction, drama, essay, film, music,
visual and material culture). Areas of inquiry will include
oral and genealogical histories, the influence of Blues, Ballads,
Appalachian music on literature, Southern Surrealism,
“Surregionalism,” “The New South,” Outsider Art, questions of
authenticity, and representations of race, sex and class.
Authors may include The Fugitive Poets, W.J. Cash, Alice Walker,
Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Tennessee
Williams, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Lillian Smith, Carson
McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Frank Stanford, C.D. Wright, Lee
Smith, Robert Morgan, Wilma Dykeman, Ross McElwee, Julie Dash and
you. Written responses will be both creative and
critical.
Staten Island Campus
ENG 2100: Literature And
Culture
MWF 9:05-10:00
TR 1:30-2:55
An interdisciplinary course focused on topics of the instructors’
choosing, such as film, autobiography, gender roles, and ethnic
identity. A creative approach to teaching and learning
literature is intended to let the class address larger cultural
issues.
ENG 2200: Intro To English
Studies
MWF 12:20-1:15
This class teaches the fundamentals of literary scholarship and
critical thinking through engaging examples and assignments.
A selective survey of world literature and independent research
projects help students gain confidence and skills for thinking on
their own. Required for English majors.
ENG 2300: Intro To Literary Criticism And
Theory
Dr. Melissa Mowry
MWF 1:25-2:20
This course offers an introduction to contemporary literary theory,
beginning with structuralism and new criticism and ending with
gender and cultural studies. We will also discuss the
importance of literary theory to English studies and how to best
use it in our own work.
ENG 3130: Shakespeare: Elizabethan
Plays
MWF 12:20-1:15
Dr. Brian Lockey
Shakespeare and the Foreign
This course will focus on the role of foreigners and foreign lands
in a selection of Shakespeare’s plans up to 1604. We will
consider the plays in the context of current literary critical
discussions on issues of subjectivity, national identity, and
racial identity as we attempt to understand how Shakespeare
represents what is foreign to or different from England
itself. By the end of the course, students should have a
better understanding of a number of important Shakespeare plays,
the culture which produced Shakespeare and the performance of his
plays.
ENG 3250: Victorian
Literature
Dr. Amy King
TR 1:30-2:55
The Victorian Age (1832-1901) spans a period of momentous social
changes for Britain; the first fifty years of the 19th century saw
the doubling of its population as Britain became the first urban
and industrial society in history. Britain also became
the wealthiest country in the world, but it also had unfathomable
poverty; there were humane reforms and social changes, but there
were new forms of exploitation; the new Darwinian science of
evolution meant progress for some, for others it signaled religious
collapse. Our own middle-class, economic, mobile, complex and
interwoven world, increasingly urbanized and organized, was first
described and mapped in this period. We will explore the ways
in which the novels and poetry of the period mark the complex
inauguration of our own modern consciousness. Authors may include:
Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Lewis Carroll, Elizabeth
Gaskell, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Arthur Conan Doyle.
ENG 3320: 19th Century American
Fiction
MWF 11:15-12:10
A study of the novelists and fiction writers of the 19th century in
America, including Hawthorne, Melville, Poe and Stowe.
ENG 3450: Modern Drama
Dr. Paul Miller
TR 9:10-10:35
Readings and criticism of several important playwrights (Ibsen,
Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, O’Neill and others).
ENG 3690: Special Topics In Literary And
Cultural Studies
MWF 10:10-11:05
A study of special themes and topics in cultural studies,
transnational and trans-historical in focus. The class will also
teach the ways in which the study of literature can become the
basis for a study in “culture” in the broadest sense.
ENG 3720: Intro To Creative
Writing
Dr. Paul Miller
TR 10:45-12:10
A course designed to help develop creative writing skills, with
emphasis on traditional and contemporary forms of poetry, fiction,
drama.
ENG 3740: Creative Writing:
Fiction
Prof. Theo Gangi
MWF 1:25-2:20
Intensive writing workshop on fiction and fiction
theory.
ENG 4994: Seminar In Themes/Genres
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
TR 10:45-12:10
Food, Taste, and Appetite
An entire body of literature, ranging across times and across
nations, celebrates the pleasure of food. And why not?
Food is not only our most basic need but the basis for our
commonality—we feel like we know characters of Chaucer or the
native people of Polynesia when we learn that they enjoyed their
meals as
we do. Of course, this is just one of the many meanings that
food and cuisine have played in history; we will also be exploring
the concept of good taste, the political importance of coffee
shops, and the special role that food has played in the crossing
and conflict of culture. The literature that we’ll be
studying include classic English novels by Austen and Fielding,
travel narratives of New World explorers, and modern food criticism
by contemporary authors; we’ll also view the movies “Supersize me”
and “Babette’s Feast.” Recipes will be exchanged.
Evening Courses
ENG 2300: Intro To Literary Criticism And
Theory
W 6:50-9:50
ENG 3220: Eighteenth Century
Novel
R 6:50-9:50
ENG 3570: women and
literature
T 6:50-9:50